No doubt, it will be for Eric Mongerson. Today, for the first time, his children will be able to meet his partner, as this article explains:

Kids To Meet Gay Dad’s Partner On Father’s Day: Kids To Meet Dad’s Partner For 1st Time On Father’s Day After Judge Tosses Ga. ‘gay Ban’

Eric Mongerson’s kids couldn’t meet his partner of two years, much less join the couple for ice cream. His friends couldn’t cheer on the children at concerts or Little League games.

The divorced dad spent thousands of dollars fighting an unusual ban imposed by a county judge in 2007 that kept the three minors from having any contact with his gay friends or partners.

He felt unfairly scrutinized every moment he spent with the kids, though he never was looking to make a statement. He just wanted to spend a day with his kids and his partner, Jose Sanchez _ together.

This Father’s Day, he finally will.

“It’s a fairy tale ending,” he told The Associated Press after the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the ban.

I would say so. Heartbreaking that it ever even came to this - or that it COULD come to this, but it did:

The ban stemmed from the bitter divorce between Mongerson and his ex-wife, Sandy, who were married for almost 20 years and had four children. Mongerson said the marriage ended when his wife discovered he was gay in November 2005, but he would not elaborate.

The dispute played out the next few years in court, as Sandy’s attorney claimed he had several affairs with other men and subjected the kids to an array of “wholly inappropriate conduct” during a trip to Arkansas.

The arguments helped sway Fayette County Superior Court Judge Christopher Edwards to award Sandy Kay Ehlers Mongerson custody of the children. The judge also issued a blanket order banning Eric Mongerson from “exposing the children to his homosexual partners and friends.” A fourth child is an adult over 18 and had no restrictions on contact with Mongerson or his gay friends.

Edwards said in his ruling that the decision was meant to reflect “the trauma inflicted upon the children” during the Arkansas trip.

Ah, yes - because all parents who have had affairs and gotten divorced have had to keep their partners away from their children by court order. Oh, wait, you mean they haven’t?? No, of course not, just some:

Mongerson, though, said it only made him feel like he was being targeted for coming out of the closet. For almost two years, Mongerson said he feared losing more time with his kids and walked on egg shells during their weekly four-hour visits.

He didn’t hide the fact he was gay from the kids, but they couldn’t be around his partner, Sanchez. He was afraid to invite straight friends who might be accused of being gay. And he wouldn’t dare bring his children to his place in downtown Atlanta, even though his wife once brought a boyfriend to his daughter’s concert.

“I was always afraid of the ‘What if?’” Mongerson said. “I felt isolated, alone. She could go get friends, have them watch the kids, but I could never because I was gay.”

Sanchez, fearful of somehow violating the order, would run through all sorts of scenarios.

“What if you and I are on a plane, and your kids happen to be on the plane?” he would ask incredulously. “Do I jump out?”

Mongerson, a restaurant manager who routinely works 13-hour shifts into the night, said he scrounged together more than $10,000 to challenge the judge’s decree, partly by wracking up debt on his credit cards.

That is one helluva way to have to live - under constant fear that anyone or anything could jeopardize one’s ability to see one’s own children, not because of any wrong-doing on the part of the parent, but just the mere PERCEPTION that who they were, whom they loved, was unacceptable. Finally, cooler heads prevailed:

In court arguments in January, attorneys Hannibal Heredia and Kimberli Reagin contended the judge had no evidence that exposing the children to Mongerson’s gay friends would damage them.

On Monday, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously agreed. Justice Robert Benham wrote in the scathing 10-page ruling that the trial court abused its discretion without evidence of harm to the children. He concluded it “flies in the face of our public policy that encourages divorced parents to participate in the raising of their children.”

The decision was quickly applauded by gay rights advocates who say the judge’s order was rooted in decades-old misconceptions about gays and lesbians. Jeff Graham of Georgia Equality called the top court’s decision a dose of “common sense and fair mindedness.”

Sandy Mongerson’s attorney, Lance McMillian, said the mother does not plan to appeal.

“My client is interested in putting it behind her,” he said. “Other than that, we don’t have anything to say about it.”

As news of the court’s ruling filtered down to Mongerson on Monday morning, he picked up the phone and called his partner. It didn’t take long to work out their schedule for Father’s Day, when they’ll finally go out for that ice cream.

“I cry at commercials _ he cries before commercials come on,” Sanchez said. “He’s very emotional. He said, ‘Happy Father’s Day. You get to meet my children.’”

Here’s the thing. What makes this even more egregious and offensive is that studies show that children raised in same-sex parents’ households are perfectly well-adjusted:

“There are a lot of children with at least one gay or lesbian parent,” says Ellen C. Perrin, MD, professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. She revealed the findings at the American Academy of Pediatrics Conference and Exhibition.

Between 1 million and 6 million children in the U.S. are being reared by committed lesbian or gay couples, she says. Children being raised by same-sex parents were either born to a heterosexual couple, adopted, or conceived through artificial insemination.

“The vast consensus of all the studies shows that children of same-sex parents do as well as children whose parents are heterosexual in every way,” she tells WebMD. “In some ways children of same-sex parents actually may have advantages over other family structures.“

Say WHAAAAA???? How can that be? Ahem. It’s an interesting article, if you want to go take a look, but I don’t want to get too far away from this joyous story.

So, back to the Father’s Day happy ending, and a happy ending it is. Finally, this father can share the joy of his children with his partner. The children will have yet another person in their lives who loves them, and that is a good thing indeed.

Again, Happy Father’s Day, you dads. And to the all of the children (adult, I assume) reading this, remember that every day is precious with your parents - I lost my dad almost 4 years ago, and you never know which Father’s Day is going to be the last. So, treasure it, treasure your dad, and your mom, too, and remember that time is fleeting. Share the love. That’s what it’s all about, anyway…

The CIA, which has been monitoring foreign countries’ use of electronic voting systems, has reported apparent vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine and a raft of concerns about the machines’ vulnerability to tampering.

Appearing last month before a U.S. Election Assistance Commission field hearing in Orlando, Fla., a CIA cybersecurity expert suggested that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his allies fixed a 2004 election recount, an assertion that could further roil U.S. relations with the Latin leader.

In a presentation that could provide disturbing lessons for the United States, where electronic voting is becoming universal, Steve Stigall summarized what he described as attempts to use computers to undermine democratic elections in developing nations. His remarks have received no news media attention until now.

Stigall told the Election Assistance Commission, a tiny agency that Congress created in 2002 to modernize U.S. voting, that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results.

“You heard the old adage ‘follow the money,’ ” Stigall said, according to a transcript of his hour-long presentation that McClatchy obtained. “I follow the vote. And wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that’s an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to . . . make bad things happen.”

Stigall said that voting equipment connected to the Internet could be hacked, and machines that weren’t connected could be compromised wirelessly. Eleven U.S. states have banned or limited wireless capability in voting equipment, but Stigall said that election officials didn’t always know it when wireless cards were embedded in their machines.

Oh, goodie - yet more ways for people to commit voter fraud! Ahem. As if they NEED any more ways - and I know he is talking about other countries, but the possibility of wireless and Internet voting coming to a town/city/overseas military base is most DEFINITELY possible.

And now, to the good ol’ USA:

While Stigall said that he wasn’t speaking for the CIA and wouldn’t address U.S. voting systems, his presentation appeared to undercut calls by some U.S. politicians to shift to Internet balloting, at least for military personnel and other American citizens living overseas. Stigall said that most Web-based ballot systems had proved to be insecure.

The commission has been criticized for giving states more than $1 billion to buy electronic equipment without first setting performance standards. Numerous computer-security experts have concluded that U.S. systems can be hacked, and allegations of tampering in Ohio, Florida and other swing states have triggered a campaign to require all voting machines to produce paper audit trails.

The CIA got interested in electronic systems a few years ago, Stigall said, after concluding that foreigners might try to hack U.S. election systems. He said he couldn’t elaborate “in an open, unclassified forum,” but that any concerns would be relayed to U.S. election officials.

Holy frijoles, really?? Yikes - another good reason not to do this. Not that we didn’t have foreign interference this past election with campaign contributions, specifically to the Obama campaign (I wonder just how many laws Obama broke getting himself into the White House??)

The expert got more specific about a few countries:

Stigall, who’s studied electronic systems in about three dozen countries, said that most countries’ machines produced paper receipts that voters then dropped into boxes. However, even that doesn’t prevent corruption, he said.

Turning to Venezuela, he said that Chavez controlled all of the country’s voting equipment before he won a 2004 nationwide recall vote that had threatened to end his rule.

When Chavez won, Venezuelan mathematicians challenged results that showed him to be consistently strong in parts of the country where he had weak support. The mathematicians found “a very subtle algorithm” that appeared to adjust the vote in Chavez’s favor, Stigall said.

Calls for a recount left Chavez facing a dilemma, because the voting machines produced paper ballots, Stigall said.

“How do you defeat the paper ballots the machines spit out?” Stigall asked. “Those numbers must agree, must they not, with the electronic voting-machine count? . . . In this case, he simply took a gamble.”

Stigall said that Chavez agreed to allow 100 of 19,000 voting machines to be audited.

“It is my understanding that the computer software program that generated the random number list of voting machines that were being randomly audited, that program was provided by Chavez,” Stigall said. “That’s my understanding. It generated a list of computers that could be audited, and they audited those computers.

“You know. No pattern of fraud there.”

A Venezuelan Embassy representative in Washington declined immediate comment.

The disclosure of Stigall’s remarks comes amid recent hostile rhetoric between President Barack Obama and Chavez. On Sunday, Chavez was quoted as reacting hotly to Obama’s assertion that he’s been “exporting terrorism,” referring to the new U.S. president as a “poor ignorant person.”

Questions about Venezuela’s voting equipment caused a stir in the United States long before Obama became president, because Smartmatic, a voting machine company that partnered with a firm hired by Chavez’s government, owned U.S.-based Sequoia Voting Systems until 2007. Sequoia machines were in use in 16 states and the District of Columbia at the time.

Reacting to complaints that the arrangement was a national security concern, the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States launched an investigation. Smartmatic then announced in November 2007 that it had sold Sequoia to a group of investors led by Sequoia’s U.S.-based management team, thus ending the inquiry.

Again, WHY have we not had this level of investigation HERE??? Blackboxvoting.org has documented instance after instance after INSTANCE of electronic voting machine shenanigans (examples below), and we sure have not had the Treasury Department launching full scale investigations HERE! Pathetic.

As for Chavez allegedly fixing the election in 2004, I think it is safe to say we shouldn’t be throwing stones (as in living in a glass house ourselves), no matter whether you like/hate Chavez. We need only look back at our past 3 elections to prove that point. Unless this is one of those, “do as we say, not as we do” kind of things…

And isn’t it interesting that Obama is picking fights with Chavez, too, just like Bush did? Curious…

Back to the international scene:

In the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Stigall said, hackers took resurrecting the dead to “a new art form” by adding the names of people who’d died in the 18th century to computerized voter-registration lists. Macedonia was accused of “voter genocide” because the names of so many Albanians living in the country were eradicated from the computerized lists, Stigall said.

He said that elections also could be manipulated when votes were cast, when ballots were moved or transmitted to central collection points, when official results were tabulated and when the totals were posted on the Internet.

In Ukraine, Stigall said, opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko lost a 2004 presidential election runoff because supporters of Russian-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych “introduced an unauthorized computer into the Ukraine election committee national headquarters. They snuck it in.

“The implication is that these people were . . . making subtle adjustments to the vote. In other words, intercepting the votes before it goes to the official computer for tabulation.”

Taped cell-phone calls of the ensuing cover-up led to nationwide protests and a second runoff, which Yushchenko won.

Election Assistance Commission officials didn’t trumpet Stigall’s appearance Feb. 27, and he began by saying that he didn’t wish to be identified. However, the election agency had posted his name and biography on its Web site before his appearance.

Electronic voting systems have been controversial in advanced countries, too. Germany’s constitutional court banned computerized machines this month on the grounds that they don’t allow voters to check their choices.

Well, there’s a concept. Germany actually cares that the voter can assure his or her vote is recorded accurately. What a concept! Ad more:

Stigall said that some countries had taken novel steps that improved security.

For example, he said, Internet systems that encrypt vote results so they’re unrecognizable during transmission “greatly complicates malicious corruption.” Switzerland, he noted, has had success in securing Internet voting by mailing every registered citizen scratch cards that contain unique identification numbers for signing on to the Internet. Then the voters must answer personal security questions, such as naming their mothers’ birthplaces.

Stigall commended Russia for transmitting vote totals over classified communication lines and inviting hackers to test its electronic voting system for vulnerabilities. He said that Russia now hoped to enable its citizens to vote via cell phones by next year.

“As Russia moves to a one-party state,” he said, “they’re trying to make their elections available . . . so everyone can vote for the one party. That’s the irony.”

After reviewing Stigall’s remarks, Susannah Goodman, the director of election reform for the citizens’ lobby Common Cause, said they showed that “we can no longer ignore the fact that all of these risks are present right here at home . . . and must secure our election system by requiring every voter to have his or her vote recorded on a paper ballot.”

Well, true that, Ms. Goodman. We have our own problems here, like Bev Harris of Black Box Voting finding garbage bags full of CERTIFIED votes tossed out in the trash, while another set were resented as the count. I am not making this crap up. Check it: Certified Votes found in trash in Florida.

Or how about this one: . Oh, now THAT’S some security there, because NO ONE can get a mini-bar key, right??

A NUMBER of states have had issues with voting machine problems. Check HERE - I bet you’ll find your state listed (special nod to my home state, NC, which had some machines that, once they reached their pre-designed total, began to count BACKWARDS.
Mini-bar key can open Diebold Electronic Voting Machines.

The problems in New Mexico were so rampant, it is thought they cost Kerry the presidency. They continued this past year, too, and not just in New Mexico.

Don’t even get me started on Ohio, both in 2004 and 2008 (I have written about the voter fraud issues in Ohio a number of times, as have a bunch of others. You can view previous articles Here, Here, and Here, for starters.)

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of voting machine issues in this country.

Ms. Goodman is absolutely right - we cannot ignore the voting problems we have at home. I sure wish the FBI, Treasury Department, and anyone else in the upper echelons of government, would do as much work here at home as the CIA is doing abroad on this critical issue. In my humble opinion, we have not had legitimate elections since the introduction of the Diebold machines. Add in blatant voter fraud (and one man gleefully acknowledged he voted more than once on national tv), and I think it is safe to say our elections do not “count every vote” (neither does the Democratic Party for that matter - oh, wait - they do, just not the way in which the people cast them).

We need REAL voting machine reform in this country, too, the sooner the better, preferably by 2010 (elections are not THAT far away)…

Or how about Georgia where the fraud looks to have involved over 100,000 people. Yes, ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE. Registered to vote in Georgia, as well as FL or OH.

But hey, let’s not talk about this stuff anymore, okay? That would be a real downer, a killjoy, a buzzkill, and just plain racist. So, let’s just not mention it, shall we? It is only our democracy at stake, but no worries - we have our first biracial president, so all is right with our world!

Oh, no, instead the MSM will spend countless hours talking about what kind of puppy the Obama girls are going to get, and about Obama meeting with the Actual President (which I say that way since so many of the Obamaborg seem to think he is instantly president - does NO ONE take Civics classes anymore?), and his getting his national security briefings. How could I forget? His choosing his cabinet. Oh, yes - that is a fun one - and this is a little shout out to all of my female university teaching family - how about that Lawrence Summers as possible Treasury Secretary? Remember him? The one who had to leave the presidency at Harvard because of his SEXIST TREATMENT OF WOMEN???? Just more of the same from Obama.

Oh, there are a few women’s names bandied around for his cabinet positions, but not as many as the men, that’s for sure. I guess Dr. Lynette Long was right on target when she reported this:

“I want gender parity. I want Obama to go on National television and announce the he will select a female running mate and that half of his cabinet will be women.” He was silent for a second and then sheepishly replied, “We can’t do that?” “Why not?” I asked. “We are over half the population?” “We can’t do that! What if there isn’t a competent woman?” I was stunned. “There are 300 million people in this country, and you can’t find a handful of competent women for the cabinet?” I chided. “You want affirmative action. I don’t believe in affirmative action.” “That’s my offer, take it or leave it.” He left it and guess what, he hasn’t called me any more.

Obama doesn’t believe in supporting women. I’ll use a recent NYT article as evidence. It cited that Obama has 300 foreign policy advisers. The times posted pictures of the top twenty-one of them. Two were women. That’s less than ten percent. So much for parity. So much for the politics of change.

Yeah, and I haven’t heard any woman’s name floated for any part of Obama’s cabinet, have you?

Here’s why I am so damn cranky today, besides all of the ranting above: the Democrats are acting EXACTLY like the Republicans did in 2000. EXACTLY. Ignoring all of the fraud, claiming the “losers” need to get over it, Obama is a Uniter and a Healer, and will make America proud again. Blech. What a crock. This man has not even served a full term in the Senate, and the vast majority of his time there has been spent CAMPAIGNING! Since when is that sufficient experience for the highest office in the land? Even assuming there was no caucus fraud, or Convention fraud, or RBC fraud, or voter fraud, even assuming ALL of that, Obama is WOEFULLY inexperienced, unqualified, and unprepared. Not to mention homophobic and misogynistic. Oh, and ARROGANT as all hell. What a guy.

I understand that many African Americans are ecstatic that “one of their own” is now the President-Elect. But as Patsy from the “Our View - withPatsy and Sugar” on NoQuarter Radio said last night, Obama did NOT grow up like the vast majority of African Americans in this country, he did not grow up in their community. I guess it really doesn’t matter that he is bi-racial, and raised by the white side of the family. Why let facts inform the fantasy? Shut up already! Ahem.

Finally, there is the whole “the voting was of RECORD proportions!” meme being spread far and wide by the Obama Propaganda News. How else to say this? Well, it’s a crock of hooey. The difference between this election and the last one? One percentage point more! Oh, dear goddess, He really IS the Messiah! WOWIE ZOWIE!!!!! Uh, yeah, no, not really. It is not a record turnout, as it turns out. Just one more notch in the “reality” surrounding the candidate, uh, President-Elect, who has rewritten his history whenever it suits. Unfortunately, it suits him a whole bunch.

See, just like Bush in 2000. Only this time the shoe is on the other foot. The Democrats could care less about the irony of it all, the fraud of it all, as long as they won. It really is upside down world now…And it makes me cranky as hell.

Throughout this campaign season, any attempts to discern the “content of (Obama’s) character” have been thwarted by the Propaganda Machine, formerly known as the Fourth Estate, his handlers, the DNC, and his followers who claim, irrationally, I might add, the “Obama will heal us!” as Cher did on The Ellen Degeneres Show Nov. 3rd, as if he truly IS the Obamessiah, ignoring the tremendous splitting of the country, of the Democratic Party itself.

For the first time in memory, a candidate was NOT “known by the company he keeps,” “the birds of a feather which flocked together.” Rather, any mention of Bill Ayers was met, even by university professors with the illogical justification that Obama was only 8 when Bill Ayers and his compatriot, Bernadine Dorhn, were bombing the US Capitol, Pentagon, and other US buildings.

That may be so, but the ideology which drove Ayers and Dorhn is the ideology to which they still adhere. Obama has chosen to have them in his life, to live near them, work with them, and seek them out, as we recently learned for sure (as many of us suspected, and confirmed in this article by Steve Diamond at No Quarter, “Ayers and Obama In Regular Contact Says Source Close to Obama Candidacy“).

The list of his close associates in addition to Ayers and Dorhn are troubling: Rezko, Wright, Khalidi, Kilpatrick, Farakkhan, Blogajevich, et al, a list that contains convicted felons and one under investigation. I have said before, and will say again, any ONE of these people would have sunk any other candidacy, yet in the case of Obama, they were brushed aside as irrelevant. As was the glaring reality that Obama took the majority of his policy positions, often lock, stock, and barrel, from Hillary Clinton. But the Propaganda arm flipped it around, and his minions, again, many university professors, brushed aside his plagiarism as inconsequential. What a great lesson they are teaching their students, and their children.

Along those lines, I am in disbelief that adults, people who would not hire Obama at their own universities or businesses with his refusal to provide ANY documentation of his academic life, or allow friends, families, or fellow students to discuss him to ANYONE trying to get information on this first term senator running for the highest office in the land, would gladly give this man their votes.

I despair that adults, and their children, believe that the means justify the ends, that hundreds of thousands of fraudulent voter registrations, over 200,000 in Ohio, and 212,000 discovered in Georgia, in which voters were registered in GA, as well as OH or FL, are dismissed because as one neighbor, a retired university professor said, “ACORN does great work.” The level of voter registration fraud was through the ceiling, as the 16 investigations into ACORN indicate, yet the Propagandists say NOTHING about this as Obama “wins” contests in states where voter registration fraud was rampant. Even duplicate voting is brushed aside, as this video demonstrates (and h/t to a listener of Truthteller’s Election Night Radio Show mentioned):

Um, no - it is NOT okay for anyone to vote more than once in an election. It is FRAUD, and it is ILLEGAL!! But we already know there were instances of this in OH and FL. Heck, in VA, felons were allowed, no, RECRUITED, to vote for Obama, but absentee ballots to our military serving abroad went out late, sparking a lawsuit to make sure THEIR votes were counted. And on and on it goes.

As I said, I despair that adults are teaching our young people that you cheat, lie, and steal to get what you want. While you are at it, make sure you are a sore loser, hammering away at the vanquished in a juvenile, mean-spirited manner, never having learned the concept of gracious winning (especially when the “winning” is suspect). These are the same people who said NOTHING, or were SUPPORTIVE, of the Democratic Party forever smearing its very name by stealing votes from one candidate to give to another. The ends justify the means, and if that means we tarnish, tear down, belittle, smear, and steal from a candidate to win, so be it. Oh - and blame them for it, too, while we are at it as the NY Times did in an incredibly offensive editorial it had up last night celebrating Obama’s defeat of Clinton (I won’t link to it - go find it yourself if you want to read that dribble). We have now taught our young people that you can register as many times as you want, and vote as often as you want - just like on “American Idol”! - to make sure YOUR candidate wins. Fair and square is old school. Now it is win at all and any costs, and belittle your opponent while you are at it.

Then there are the issues of misogyny and race-baiting that sustained this campaign, with the willing participation of the Propaganda Arm, Obama, and the DNC. The treatment of women during this campaign was a low I have not seen in DECADES, yet many women were willing participants to this abuse, claiming even as Obama contradicted them, that he was going to be great for women. Ask Hillary. Ask Sarah. Ask those folks wearing, “Sarah Palin Is a C–t” t-shirts, or the organization that used the “C-word” as its acronym regarding Hillary. Women were treated as not just objects, but as sexual anatomy period, in a most vulgar and derogatory way. Still, since it was the DNC, too many women accepted this treatment from the very party of which they are the majority. How they can celebrate the future presidency of a man who treats women in such a hostile manner is beyond me. That goes for the GLBT community, too. But hey - they got their “Bro Before Ho,” so I know they are happy.

The race baiting that was used to tear down our only two term Democratic president in decades was horrendous to watch, especially as members serving in Congress, people whom President Clinton had helped personally, went out of their way to paint him with the stigma of being racist. Hillary, too. Two people who have worked TIRELESSLY to end discrimination in this people were called racists, and it stuck. Then anyone who would not, could not, imagine voting for the most inexperienced, unqualified candidate who was taking Chicago-style politics national, with his thugs attacking people around the country, were labeled, no, BRANDED racists if they did not support Obama. As women’s rights have been set back decades after this election season, so have been race relations. All in the service of getting this man elected because of the color of his skin, not the content of his character, which is still largely ignored or unexplored by the electorate and the Propagandists.

I do not think this is what Dr. King had in mind. I do not think this is what our founders had in mind, either. This election, with its win at all costs, even if it means cheating, lying, and stealing, is not democracy. It surely isn’t decent. And it is not the American Way. At the moment, I can’t see how this will change - how we will regain any semblance of justice, of knowing right from wrong, of being ethical, moral, good. Yes, we made history last night, but I ask you, at what cost to us, to our country? I weep for us today, at what we have become. I have to hope, and pray, that we will regain what we have lost, but for today, grief overwhelms me.

If you need a recap, suffice it to say I will not vote for the most arrogant, condescending, homophobic, lying, bullying, cheating (with help from the DNC), unqualified, inexperienced, race baiting, Authoritarian Socialistic misogynist ever. I mean, NEVER. Apparently, neither will Charles Krauthammer, a commentator who is growing on me (H/T to SusanUnPC for this article!).

Recently, in this article, McCain for President, Dr.Krauthammer
endorsed McCain. Dr. Krauthammer laid it all out there, saying what a lot of us out here think, too:

Contrarian that I am, I’m voting for John McCain. I’m not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it’s over before it’s over. I’m talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they’re left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe — neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) — yelling “Stop!” I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I’d rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

Well, good for him.

Scott McClellan apparently couldn’t sign up fast enough, the man who served as Bush’s mouthpiece for the war is now an Obama supporter. Funny, I haven’t heard any disdain coming out from the Obamabots about him. Or “If We Don’t Invade Iraq We Will Be Awash In White Powder” Powell. I guess it’s okay that the man who SOLD the war so many of us oppose, and one of the MAIN reasons Obamabots claim they support Obama, now endorses an Obama presidency is somehow a great achievement to these people. Logic is not their strong suit, apparently.

Krauthammer continues:

First, I’ll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The “erratic” temperament issue, for example. As if McCain’s risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

McCain the “erratic” is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Here is what is so, so, so sad about this whole election campaign. An amazingly qualified candidate had her decades’ worth of experience minimized and belittled by her opponent, her party, members of her party, and the media, largely because she is a woman. Had anyone else had that breadth and depth of experience, they would be glorified. And now they have started on McCain, but taking a different tact. Now it is that McCain is so old his experience doesn’t matter - it’s old school, and we’re the new kids on the block. Get out the way, Gramps - the cool kids are coming through now, and they’re gonna show you how it’s REALLY done. Never mind that these wet-behind-the-ears pups haven’t the FOGGIEST into what they are getting themselves. They have proclaimed The One to be the cat’s meow, and he can do no wrong. Especially since they haven’t bothered to listen to what he actually SAYS he is going to do or how he is going to do it. I reckon they think they’ll just be getting a check from him if he’s elected, and that’s all they need. Either way, experience is BAD - inexperience is GOOD!!! Sheesh.

Krauthammer won’t put up with all of the Obama Camp nonsense, though, thank heavens:

Nor will I countenance the “dirty campaign” pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports “cutting Social Security benefits in half.” And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

McCain’s critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What’s astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Halle-damn-lujah - Someone is saying what we have been saying. How is it that Obama has continued this relationship with this man, this “educator” trying to radicalize the youth of Chicago, who bombed the Pentagon and our Capitol Building? How can that possibly be? I think we all know the answer to that question, and the recently revealed video tapes in which Obama expresses his true ideology are confirmed. Though Barbara West, she of the interview with Biden that actually tried to get answers, said that Obama said himself, in his book, that he was intrigued by Marxism, and sought out friends with a Marxist bent. I’ll provide that video for you at the end of this post. The point is that we should ALL have been offended by Obama’s relationship to Ayers, not excusing it.

The good doctor continues his explanation for his choice, including the race-baiting of the Obama camp:

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama’s most egregious association — with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the past year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

Is this a trick question? Well, I agree with Krauthammer when he writes:

There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he’s been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today’s economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb. letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Do the Obama people just want to pretend all of McCain’s qualifications don’t exist because of his age, or because he is Republican, or because if they do acknowledge it, they will negate their own campain? In any event, so far, they have been allowed to get away with it, courtesy of the Fourth Estate. Most of the MSM never acknowledge McCain’s stand on the economy, all the way back to 2005, and Obama’s bounty from the very people who got us into this economic mess. No, rather they lump McCain into the pool of people they claim are responsible for the misfortune facing so many, TOO may, people in this country now. Apparently, creating news has become more important than reporting news, at least when it comes to Obama and McCain. And while I was opposed to the surge, thinking it was a bad idea, I have to admit that it does seem to be working now. Rather than give McCain the credit he deserves for knowing that from the beginning, media prefers to rationalize away Obama’s stand, or they seem to steer away from any discussion of what is happening in Iraq at all these days. That seems to be how they deal with everything - ignore, obfuscate, justify, manipulate, lie.

Yep, that Dr. Krauthammer is one smart man, I have to say. While I do not agree with him on everything in general, I agree with him on this: McCain is far more qualified, both in terms of experience and in terms of character, to lead this country.

As promised, here is the Barbara West piece in which she explains where she got her questions to ask Joe Biden about Obama’s socialistic tendencies. Obama himself, of course:

I think that we’re shifting the political paradigm here. And if I’m the nominee, I think I can bring a lot of folks along on my coattails. You know, there’s a reason why in 2006, I made the most appearances for members of Congress. I was the most requested surrogate to come in and campaign for people in districts that were swing districts, Republican districts where they wouldn’t have any other Democrat.

A narrative was developed in the blogosphere that Obama, unlike Hillary, would be able to touch the hearts of red state conservatives and turn them into Democrats. Hillary was too polarizing, it was argued, and she would be fighting for Kerry’s states plus 1.

It was mandatory at dailykos to believe that Obama was a map-changer. A diarist from North Dakota named Ab2kgj, in a post which would be funny if it weren’t so painful, suggested that Obama had a real shot at grabbing that state:

I’ll start with ripping a part of McCain’s base right out from under him. I live in North Dakota, and I have a feeling that we will be more of a swing state than people realize. Up here in nowhereland, the reason that Republicans do so well is because of “family values,” and an automatic 15 point bump in the polls. I gotta tell ya though. I see change in the air, because we also can smell phonies a mile away, and John McCain calling us “his friends” doesn’t seem to cut it for the sensible, middle of the roaders up here.

Regardless of what Ab2kgj sees in the air, Obama is not going to win North Dakota, but that fact didn’t stop the Obama campaign from expending millions in red states.

The Obama campaign has always known that they would have a hard time winning both Ohio and Florida, the recent path to the presidency. Campaign manager Plouffe:

said Ohio and Florida start out very competitive — but he stressed that they are not tougher than other swing states and said Obama will play “extremely hard” for both. But he said the strategy is not reliant on one or two states.

Talk of map-changing was utilized by Obama in the primary campaign as a tactic to hide his real weakness with blue-collar voters. Obama and his team have shown disdain for this core group of the Democratic Party, and Obama’s “hope” message fails to offer them a compelling reason to vote for him. Anglachel explains their hostility this way:

In the minds of the liberal elite, the problems and failures of the progressive agenda could be laid at the feet of bigoted whites, the “Archie Bunkers” of the North, and the “Bubbas” of the South. And there lies the strategic fault line of the Democratic Party, the willingness of a significant portion of the party, and I’m willing to wager the majority of the party power brokers, to see the electoral problem as how to minimize the damage of the Bunkers.

Not only has Obama insulted these Democrats who live in the greater Appalachia region with accusations of being bitter and bigoted, some of his supporters inferred that voters’ resistance to Obama was because of racism. But the real problem is that Obama does not appear to offer solutions to their economic problems. Howard Fineman believes that part of Obama’s troubles now stem from the fact that he does not articulate a clear, concise economic message:

It is not enough to be for change – everybody is, or is trying to be. To make it stick, Obama needed, and needs, to put forth an easy-to-grasp grand proposal, one that would encapsulate what his central message. That tagline? That he is dedicated, body and soul, to advancing the economic interests of hard-working, average Americans. He has the makings of such a proposal – his tax cuts for low and middle-income families. But he has yet to package that, or anything else, in an easy-to-grasp, hard-number plan for voters. Instead, he’s got more of a laundry list than an actual rallying cry.

Turning their backs on the rust-belt, Obama’s team, as recently as June, looked to deep-red states:

“You have a lot of ways to get to 270,” Plouffe said. “Our goal is not to be reliant on one state on November 4th.”

Plouffe has been pitching such a new approach to the electoral map in calls and meetings, according to several people who discussed the conversations on the condition of anonymity because they were meant to be private. Plouffe confirmed the descriptions in the interview.

Plouffe and his aides are weighing where to contest, and where chances are too slim to marshal a large effort. A win in Virginia (13 electoral votes) or Georgia (15 votes) could give Obama a shot if he, like Kerry, loses Ohio or Florida.

Although it appears Virginia is still competitive at this point, Georgia is now off the table. A new poll by InsiderAdvantage says that “Obama Implodes in Georgia,” and:

Poll Position survey of likely registered voters in Georgia indicates a steep decline for the Barack Obama campaign and likely explains why the candidate is moving resources out of Georgia and into other states.

Q. If the election were held today, would you vote for:

John McCain: 56%
Barack Obama: 38%
Other: 2%
Undecided: 4%

Obama’s collapse in Georgia has been sudden and dramatic. McCain is in the process of solidifying his base, but the demographics of this collapse do not bode well for Obama, and we should expect smaller but real shifts towards McCain in the more competitive states; that has always been the danger of over-extending your resources into unwinnable states:

InsiderAdvantage’s Matt Towery: “This is a huge slide from what had been, in our prior surveys, a relatively close race. The reason is simple—Obama lost serious ground in virtually every demographic.

“At first glance it would seem that Obamais headed for no better than the low 40 percentile level achieved by John Kerry in 2004. But let me warn observers that in both our national tracking and surveys in other states, the biggest change has been a near parity between the two candidates among the youngest of voters.

“Should that group return to Obama and the African-American vote end up where we expect it to be, the race could be closer in November. But as of now Georgia is no longer a “leans McCain” state. As of this survey, Georgia is in the McCain column.”

Obama’s shrinking map is not a shock to Hillary supporters, but it’s ironic now that Obama will have to turn to Ohio, Florida, and, particularly, Pennsylvania to attempt to squeak out a victory, places where he performed poorly in the primaries and to the voters he and his campaign have continually insulted.

On August 19, Julie Foudy, only one of the most awesome women of all time - and a HIGHLY successful soccer player who also fought HARD against the Republicans attempts to dismiss Title IX, had an intense “human interest” story. It was about a young Afghan woman named Mehmoba Ahdyar. She is a runner, and the only woman on the Afghanistan Olympics team (she is a runner). What was particularly intense were the reports of what she has to go through to train, particularly the threats and the taunts.

Take a look at the video (I have to say, it was informative to me to hear what they think of Karzai).

But then there was a twist a month before the Olympics. She disappeared. No one had a clue where she was. They had to pull in another athlete, Robina Muqimyar, also a track runner, to replace her. Muqimyar had retired from running, so this came as quite a surprise to her. She came in last.

But what became of Andyar? Well, the video below reveals it all. There is a bit of duplication between the two, but not much, so bear with it:

So now we know. She defected. Why? Because to be a young woman in Afghanistan now, one with dreams and hopes that other young women around the world are encouraged to pursue, means threats against her, and her family. It means the police showing up at the door. It means her family being taken to jail because she is accused of being a “prostitute.”

What a mess. What a mess to which we have contributed, and which we have neglected. If only our Congress had some kind of oversight committee for Afghanistan and NATO to help it push forward, and to help push back the Taliban, to…What? What did you say? That Congress DOES have that kind of committee? Well, what the hell has it done lately? Nothing? NOTHING?? Why not? Why would a committee that had oversight over a country in which we are at WAR not done anything? Because the chairman has been busy running for president?? You have got to be kidding me!! Not ONE meeting? Huh.

Now, I gotta tell you, that if HILLARY had been chair of that committee, they would have met a gazillion times by now. She would know who BOTH of these women athletes were, and would have helped them get the training they needed, the PROTECTION they needed. She would have gotten more of our soldiers there to do the job they were sent to do. And she would have gotten some schools built. Oh, you know she would have.

And so, here is one last video for you. It is Hillary Clinton talking about her trip to Iraq and Afghanistan (side note - pay attention to where she said she went when she was over there. Oh, you’ll know - trust me!). And just imagine that THIS person is the one who becomes president, not the one who cannot be bothered to chair one single damn committee meeting on European and NATO Affairs, to provide absolutely NO oversight to a country in which we have our TROOPS.

Here’s Hillary Clinton, the one who will actually HELP women like Andyar and Muqimyar, and who was prescient about Afghanistan:

And once again, SuperDs, I remind you - there is still time. Just because Obama was selected the Presumptuous Nominee does not mean you have to go along with it. Stand up for democracy, stand up for what is right, stand UP for the person who can actually WIN the White House, and who is dedicated to the country’s citizens. You know that is Hillary Clinton, not Mr. “That’s above my pay grade and I will ask my wife and grandmother what I should do when I am faced with a difficult decision” Obama. This is no time to worry about pride. This is the time to worry about the COUNTRY. We have serious problems - Iraq; Pakistan, even more now since Musharraf stepped down; Georgia and Russia…This is the time for serious leadership, and that is NOT Obama. It IS Hillary Clinton. She is the one the people want to take care of these situations, and bring our country forward. SHE is the One for whom we have been waiting. Do your jobs - vote your CONSCIENCE, not your bank balance. Stand up. Stand UP.

I just thought maybe you might want to take another vacation. Russian troops took some prisoners today and commandeered some USA Humvees in the process.

As you know, Barky, Putin’s poodle, Medvedev, signed an agreement to pull out of Georgia, but goodness, he doesn’t seem to be leaving that country that has fewer residents than the size of the Russian army. He keeps telling us he will leave soon but he just doesn’t keep his promise, I just know he’s dying to talk to you so everybody can kiss and make up.

So Barky, I suggest maybe Jamaica this time.

Then you could call a press conference, make a nice statement about how we need a UN Resolution that Putin can veto. Maybe you might want to give him a call from the sailboat and tell him it’s not nice to be trying to put together the Soviet Union again, but places like Georgia just don’t want to go. You remember the Soviet Union don’t you Barky? Oh that’s right, you were using diapers when they were at their worst, but I just KNOW you read a page about it in your tenth grade the history book, so you’re good to go.

So give him a call. I know he will take your call right away Barky and then pull right out of Georgia just for The One. Right after he finishes falling on the floor holding his stomach and laughing.

What was this you said again Barky–about disarming America? There’s just no end to your brilliance, man! Why don’t you just tell us you are going to hand us right over to your jihad buddies in the Middle East on Day One!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl32Y7wDVDs[/youtube]

OK, campaigning is hard work. And you want to be President, right?

So, why were you in Hawaii for an extended vacation just before Denver? And what’s with not taking the kids with you to see Grandma?

Or was it that pesky birth certificate thingy that needs some attention? (Questions still need to be answered on this one.)

There is a “3 a.m. moment” going on. Or was the idea to be out of commission for a while in the hopes of not making any more foreign policy gaffes before Denver?”

Finally, the polls have flat-lined at a time when you should be 15 points ahead. That’s probably something to worry about. Don’t you think that instead of bouncing through Europe and playing in Hawaii, your time would be better spent courting us white working class folks here at home who don’t “get” you? It might not work (and please don’t blame Hillary Clinton if it doesn’t), but you should have really tried.

Aloha.

How would you characterize a man who:

has played the race card to great effect repeatedly and with impunity throughout his campaign, and gotten the mainstream press and the Democratic elite to gamely play along;

has insulted or ignored anyone who didn’t vote for him;

is too politically shortsighted to realize that by nixing a roll call for Hillary and not placing her name in nomination, he is probably costing himself the election, further alienating her voters.

Forgive me, but he doesn’t sound very unifying.

More telling are Senator Obama’s unscripted moments – very Bush-like. I know Senator Obama reads a teleprompter well, and perhaps imitates the cadence of Rev. Martin Luther King. But the message underneath rings hollow.

In moments of crisis, and the leader of the free world will encounter many, there may not be time for 20 scriptwriters to pull him together if he himself cannot exhibit the proper leadership to guide this nation. He will not have a long weekend as he did in creating his “scintillating speech on race” to distract from the debacle that was Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Jonah Goldberg’s op-ed in the LA Times yesterday, Obama Without His Script, was a welcome surprise, considering the source – a newspaper that, with rare exception, has given the newbie Illinois Senator glowing coverage. The subtitle…

Judging by his reaction to the Georgia-Russia crisis, Obama’s make-believe presidency isn’t ready for prime time…

…makes it look as though, at least for this columnist, the bloom is off the rose. Mr. Goldberg’s recent columns hit both Obama and McCain pretty evenly, but for the LA Times even to print this, wow! Senator Obama must have made a boo boo:

The Obama campaign has for months pursued the odd strategy of having the junior senator from Illinois act as if he were already kinda-sorta president of the United States. In June, it tried sticking a quasi-presidential seal on his lectern. Then in July, he conducted what seemed like official state visits with foreign leaders and delivered something like a “prenaugural” address in Berlin, inviting comparisons to JFK and Reagan.
…
If the would-be president can seem plausibly presidential, voting for him might not seem like such a crapshoot. It all makes sense, even if it fosters an air of presumptuousness.
…
The invasion of Georgia elicited a wan written communique instead of the sort of exciting rhetoric we’ve come to expect from his make-believe presidency. But he did make it in front of the cameras the next day for a rally celebrating his vacation in Hawaii. He promised “to go body surfing at some undisclosed location.”

During Obama’s make-believe presidency, we’ve heard about bold action, about the courage to talk to dictators. When faced with a real “3 a.m. moment,” Obama – who boasts about 200 foreign policy advisors, broken into 10 subgroups – proclaims, “I’m going to get some shave ice.”
…
Indeed, President Bush’s jaunt to the Olympics as a “sports fan” should also have been cut short the moment tanks started rolling over a country he’d proclaimed a “beacon of liberty” during his visit there in 2005. By Monday, both Bush and Obama were playing catch-up to Sen. John McCain, who seemed to have grasped the gravity from the get-go…

Putting Bush and Obama in the same sandbox and well behind McCain’s much touted handling of the 3 A.M. moment is not the kind of press Obama wants at this point.

But, for once, in the press, the assessment is honest. This country doesn’t need any more versions of someone caught flatfooted reading “My Pet Goat” instead of standing up and taking appropriate action to get on top of the situation.

Referring to Obama’s statement on the crisis, Steve Huntley, in yesterday’s Chicago Sun Times made the point:

It took first-term Sen. Barack Obama three tries to get it right. Headed for a vacation in Hawaii, the presumed Democratic candidate for commander in chief issued an even-handed statement, urging restraint by both sides. Later Friday, he again called for mutual restraint but blamed Russia for the fighting. The next day his language finally caught up with toughness of McCain’s.

Making matters worse, Obama’s staff focused on a McCain aide who had served as a lobbyist for Georgia, charging it showed McCain was “ensconced in a lobbyist culture.” Obama’s campaign came off as injecting petty partisan politics into an international crisis. This was not a serious response on behalf [of] a man who aspires to be the leader of the Free World. After all, what’s so bad about representing a small former Soviet republic struggling to remake itself as a Western-style democracy?

The comparison between the two candidates served to emphasize the strength McCain’s experience would bring to the White House in a dangerous world.

Obama’s favored approach to international issues, diplomatic talks, failed to stop Russia’s invasion. Vladimir Putin, a KGB bull in the former Soviet Union, wants to restore Russia as the supreme power of Eurasia…

However the world’s newest war ends, America’s leadership must recognize and respond to the underlying dynamic of Russia’s resurgent aggressive instincts — the power bestowed on Moscow by its oil and gas riches.

I am not endorsing Senator McCain. I think by now, everyone knows who my candidate is. Hillary exhibited great foresight about this crisis. But Senator Obama is making newbie mistakes all over the place. These are schoolyard games – harping about lobbyists at a time like this? There are far larger issues at stake here.

Mr. Goldberg of the Times further observes:

[Obama] has been playacting at being presidential in order to convince voters that we live in a “new moment” with “new challenges” – and that he is the president we need for this new era.

This moment calls for more than playacting, yet Obama looks lost without a presidential script. Events in the Caucasus – and, for that matter, in Beijing – suggest that the times aren’t so new after all. Two powerful antidemocratic foes are once again flexing their muscles at a moment when America seems weak and distracted.

That is not a new challenge but a very old one. Perhaps this is not a time for a novice spouting grand rhetoric about a new page in history, but for someone who’s actually read the pages of some old, but still relevant, books. Perhaps this is not the time for playacting.

Perhaps it is not the time for body surfing?

Obama presents grave cause for worry. He may actually be naïve enough to think that he can just “delegate” the yucky stuff and someone else is going to do the actual clean up.

I have witnessed many of his supporters recite a similar mantra – “He’ll surround himself with great people. Congress does everything anyway. He has really good judgment.” This is the President they want? A figurehead to make a “speech” and leave the rest of the work to the grown ups? This Democratic Congress isn’t doing very well – and after the behavior I have witnessed these past seven months, these are not the people I want ‘running the show.’

Aside from choosing David Axelrod (better known as Axel-Rove) as his slash and burn campaign manager, what were his good decisions exactly? I reference here my earlier assessment of why I cannot support him and his prior ‘boneheaded’ actions. This is another way he reminds me of Bush. Every time I think I have looked into the nadir, Obama does something else to earn my mistrust. I have actually started to get numb and lose track.

His shocking reversal on FISA, for example, from a supposedly dearly held belief in the sanctity of the fourth amendment betrays an arrogant “well, too bad, where else are you gonna go” attitude, taking advantage of and even diminishing the value of his most fervent supporters. Tiresome as it may be, I will remind people once again that Senator Clinton voted correctly on FISA. What happened to the filibuster Senator Obama promised us?

No off-shore oil drilling, anyone? Another one of his campaign promises. To quote Senator Obama, “Words, just words.”

But Senator Obama would be gratified to know a number of those original supporters are still making excuses for him. I would imagine it is getting both exhausting and frustrating for them.

Further, his plan to ‘accept’ the nomination at Invesco Field before an audience of 75,000 smacks simultaneously of hubris and bullying – just squash the competition, the detractors, the protesters with a wall of noise and size.

This is reminiscent of George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” declaration where, to quote General Wes Clark, Bush “pranced around on the deck of that aircraft carrier.”

I was a lifelong Democrat until two months ago. I certainly hoped we’d have a better choice at this point than to be force fed a man so arrogant and inexperienced; someone who is more interested in image management than rolling up his sleeves to do the work required to deal with the world that is – not the world he wishes could be. Perhaps he really believes that he alone can ‘heal our planet.’ Unfortunately, this is grandiose to the point of being delusional.

Leaders in other countries will not be so easily hypnotized just because our American press has been. Putin, for example, may not get a ‘tingle up his leg’ as Chris Matthews has.

Surely it has occurred to the Party elite that if Democrats cannot win the election in this ‘no-lose year,’ with the Republican brand damaged as it is, the Democratic Party will be over. Not that that would be a bad thing in its current state.

More and more, I remember Hillary’s claim to be ‘ready on day one.’ I believe she is. And we’re going to need somebody who is.

Delusions are not required. Solutions are.

I am deeply disturbed by the latest Russian actions regarding Georgia, and Russia’s broader policies towards its neighbors.

Several weeks ago I called on NATO to extend a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia and Ukraine at the Bucharest Summit. I emphasized that this move would be a litmus test for the success of President Bush’s leadership of the trans-Atlantic community. My support for MAP was based on the need to send a positive signal to Tbilisi and Kyiv to encourage them to stay on track with their positive reforms as well as to send a signal of our concern to Moscow about the future security of these countries.

I deeply regret President Bush’s inability to convince our NATO allies to take this action. This is the first time in memory a U.S. President has traveled to a NATO summit and failed to achieve his publicly proclaimed goals.

Now the Russian government has taken advantage of the lack of unity coming out of the Bucharest Summit to further ratchet up the pressure on young democracies on its borders. Moscow’s actions this week to strengthen ties with the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia undermine the territorial integrity of the state of Georgia and are clearly designed to destabilize the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Georgia is a small democratic state in a turbulent region. It must not be allowed to be undermined. Two weeks ago President Bush sat with President Putin in Sochi just a few kilometers away from the Georgian border. He prided himself on his close working relationship with Vladimir Putin. President Bush should call on the Russian leadership to immediately rescind these steps.

I also call on President Bush to immediately send a senior representative to Tbilisi to show our support for the government of Georgia. The United States should raise this matter in the United Nations Security Council, in a special 26+1 session of NATO’s North Atlantic Council (NAC), and in the NATO-Russia Council. Russia needs to hear a unified message from the United States and our European partners about our shared commitment to Georgia’s security and territorial integrity.

These are not the only Russian moves that I have found troubling. Senior Russian officials have engaged in a pressure campaign to prevent Ukraine from seeking deeper ties with NATO. President Putin even raised the prospect of retargeting nuclear missiles against Ukraine.

I am not advocating, nor do I envisage, a return to a new Cold War with Russia, which I believe ought to remain in the G-8, where the United States and its allies can together address our growing list of concerns with Moscow. But the current Administration’ s mishandling of Russian relations has contributed to Moscow’s belief that it can do as it pleases. America and its allies can and must do better.

Since Hillary is no longer ‘in the race,’ not wishing to upstage Senator Obama, I believe, she did not issue any further statement over the weekend, although clearly she has a deep understanding of this crisis and our role here. As reported previously, Senator McCain was also touted as a having a 3 A.M. moment on this issue.

In stark contrast, here was the ‘Statement from Senator Obama, on the Grave Situation in Georgia’ on his way to his Hawaiian vacation on August 8th:

“I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war. Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis.”

I will point out that upon checking Senator Obama’s website just now, he has issued two subsequent statements after the one above, one that came on August 9th and one on the 11th — each of which, respectively, was longer and more detailed than the last and perhaps, more reflective of copying Senator McCain’s homework on the subject.

Hey, take a mulligan, Senator Obama – keep floating those statements till one clicks with the appropriate gravitas.

As you can see, Hillary required no such tutoring, but exhibited a very clear, detailed grasp of the crisis, well before it reached the boiling point, when she urged President Bush to act.

Here is the opening phrase of yesterday’s missive from Senator Obama:

The situation in Georgia continues to deteriorate because of the escalation of Russia’s use of military force. I have spoken to President Saakashvili, and conveyed my deep regret over the loss of life, and the suffering of the people of Georgia.

Why Obama would be calling President Saakashvili, I have no idea. Who is he? He is not yet the official Democratic nominee, never mind that he is not the President. A mere technicality, I suppose.

Between Senators Clinton and Obama, it is eminently clear who has a far stronger grasp of foreign policy issues and certainly on the economy, she is hands and feet above a man who does not even understand what a capital gains tax is – nor could he explain it when he was questioned by Charles Gibson during the ABC debate before the Pennsylvania primary.

Who is the DNC planning on coronating, er, nominating, again?

The San Francisco Chronicle’s top story, that Clinton Supporters are pushing to get her name into nomination, reports how diligently the Obama camp is working to block such a thing from happening:

“It’s a simple thing to do, and it’s the biggest sign of party unity,” said Laura Spanjian, a San Francisco-based Clinton delegate, who also supports the move.”

Clay Dougherty, another San Francisco delegate for Clinton, says that “if the situation were reversed, the Obama people would feel the same.”

Let’s imagine if the situation were reversed. Since Obama has asked that the FL and MI delegates be seated in full now, the magic number has reverted to the correct 2210. He does not possess that number. If Hillary did not have enough pledged delegates to seal the nomination — or super delegates for that matter, imagine if Hillary tried to prevent a roll call that would honor Barack’s historic candidacy. There would be hell to pay. And she would be paying it daily. Such behavior on her part would not be tolerated.

“For the first time in a generation, it’s been a close election … and this was such a unique situation,” he said, in which both the first major African American presidential candidate competed with the first major female presidential candidate. “We need to honor both candidates,” he said.

And many Democrats suggest that the move to accommodate her supporters may be politically smart…

[Texas Delegate Garry] Mauro insisted that since it was such a closely contested election, he is mystified as to why the Obama campaign is resisting and even balking at a roll call vote, according to some reports.

“Are these folks so new to politics, are they so arrogant that they think he’s different from every other nominee we’ve ever had?” he asks.

I guess I don’t need to answer Garry’s question.

Serrano Sewell even stated, in an attempt to assuage any worry on the part of the Obama camp, there is no connection between Hillary’s delegates and PUMA:

“We’re not trying to drag Obama down,” he said. “We’re Democrats. We’re precinct captains. We’re fundraisers. We’re the kind of Democrats Obama will need to win in November.”

Similar to Senator Obama’s lack of detailed understanding of foreign policy, so, too, his arrogance and political shortsightedness is clearly in evidence in preventing a roll call vote for Senator Clinton. Or shall I say, his fear is showing.

Again, this is not indicative of good leadership, of putting the country or the Party’s interests before his own.

A true leader would not wish to treat 18,000,000 voters and 1918 delegates disrespectfully. If, as Michelle Obama says, he is going to ‘heal our broken souls,’ how does he intend to do that by throwing millions under the bus in another show of pettiness, bullying and arrogance?

Regarding the current acts of Russian aggression, a true leader, as he claims to be, looking to demonstrate his readiness for the toughest job in the world, might stop to do his homework before realizing that the first “essay” he handed in was rather flimsy.

I know I am not wrong in wanting the truly qualified candidate to be our nominee. The one who needs no tutoring. Certainly, Hillary Clinton would know better than to do what Senator Obama did yesterday: indicate he would be announcing his pick for Vice President via text message. Some traditions do need to be adhered to. The world is watching.

Senator Obama’s action do not indicate respect – either for his V.P. choice, or for us.

That is not healing.

That does not indicate political knowledge, maturity or gravitas.

Lastly, that is certainly not good leadership.

I do want to mention that over 1,500 people have already died in this war between Georgia and Russia, a war not even a day old. Fifteen hundred people. Words fail, but my heart goes out to all those who are losing people in this conflict, and all conflicts being waged around the world right now, whether it is our people, or the people of Georgia, or Russia, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or…Sadly, the list is too long.

And once again, as if there was any doubt, this is exactly why we need to have s leader, a strong leader, a compassionate leader, a decisive leader. And that person is, without a doubt in my mind, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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Politicians grabbing Barack Obama’s coattails should take note: In the Georgia democratic Senatorial primary runoff held yesterday, Jim Martin defeated Vernon Jones by a 60% to 40%. Martin will now face the Republican senior Senator from Georgia, Saxby Chambliss, in November’s election. This doesn’t seem to bode well for Obama’s presidential quest. Jones’s campaign hoped to emulate Obama’s impressive primary victory in Georgia (he defeated Senator Hillary Clinton in Georgia, 66.4% to 31.1%), but now he’s failed to even make it to November’s ballot.

In fact, Jones distributed campaign paraphernalia consisting of a picture of himself and Obama, with the words “Yes We Can!” prominently scrawled underneath the photographs. Also, Jones sent a mass email meant to smear his opponent Martin:

My campaign has uncovered evidence that my opponent, Jim Martin, did not want Senator Barack Obama to be President of the United States and that Jim Martin voted against Barack Obama in the February 2008 Presidential Primary election in Georgia. [Emphasis not my own.]

He also used this line of attack in a debate, “You say you support Barack Obama, but you voted against him.” In the first round of the primary election, Jones’s strategy of cozying up to the presumptive democratic presidential candidate paid off. Although he wasn’t able to win the race outright, he came out with the most votes (over 40%) and looked poised for victory

What explains Jones’s sudden decline? Again, it’s difficult to tell, but it makes sense to look at the most recent developments in the campaign of Jones’s political inspiration. It might have been Obama’s grand tour, or it could have been Obama’s (former) opposition to drilling off-shore, or maybe it was Obama’s adoption of whatever-policy-is-popular strategy, or it might have been any one of his many policy changes. These are, after all, issues important to Georgians.

With Obama’s humongous primary victory in Georgia, and with former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr in the presidential race (likely to take many more votes from McCain than Obama), the Obama campaign likes its chances in the Peach state. But I imagine Obama will take a hard look at this race to see what went wrong. Politics has changed even since the primary. A different Obama than the one that faced Clinton has emerged, and his campaign will now have to readjust its strategy.

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Read more great articles at Commentary magazine.